“(Un)African women: identity, class and moral geographies in postcolonial times” in African Identities, 16 (4)
The concrete and abstract geographies of difference on the African continent not only arise from environmental, socio-cultural and religious factors but also from the historical and differential impacts and experiences of colonization and its legacies. In this paper, we use the web series, An African City, as a reference point, to examine the troubling nature of binary depictions of a colonial/traditional Africa and a new/modern/global Africa. Relying on Postcolonial feminist methodologies of critique and deconstruction, we propose that in countering such simplistic narratives, Africa ought to be seen as constructed, abstract, material, plural and confusing in order to account for its complexities. In particular, we focus on the centrality of women to African identity discourses. We argue that while Afropolitan and Africa rising discourses simultaneously challenge and interrupt problematic colonial constructions of Africa as backward and in need of salvation, they also (perhaps more problematically) still re-centre the West as the progenitor of progress, thereby reiterating the colonial tale.
Sylvia Bawa is an Associate Professor in York University’s Department of Sociology. Her research and teaching interests include globalization, postcolonial and transnational feminisms, human rights, critical development theory and women’s rights.
Other publications from this author include:
- “‘People come and go but we don’t see anything’: How Might Social Research Contribute to Social Change?” in The Qualitative Report, 24 (11) (2019)
- “Women and the Human Rights Paradigm in the African Context” in International Human Rights of Women (2019)
- “Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies” in Journal of Asian and African Studies, 54 (7) (2019)
- “Feminists make too much noise!” Generational differences and ambivalence in feminist development politics in Ghana” in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 52 (1), 1-17 (2018)